Creation in the Bible Reflection #7

Creation as God’s Witness to Human Injustice – Deuteronomy 30:19-20; Jeremiah 4:23-28

This year, as in so many years past, we have borne witness to endless injustice.  It is thus worth noting that God calls on creation itself to be just such a witness.  Israel understood that, in that role, the very earth would react if Israel betrayed her covenantal responsibilities.

In Deuteronomy 30:19-20, standing on Mount Nebo, Moses seals the covenant by saying:

            I call upon heaven and earth, on this day, to witness against/concerning you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying God's voice, and cleaving to the Lord.

Similarly, in Deuteronomy 11 God uses nature for blessing or curse.  When Israel acts in justice and is obedient to God's commands, the earth is blessed.  When God's people are disobedient, nature becomes the instrument of the curse. 

More than this -- when Israel forgets her part of the covenant, when injustice marks Israel's dealings with the poor and the needy and God's demands are ignored, all nature cries out and curses replace blessing.

We are shown again and again in Scripture that the world responds to the choices we make and to the actions we take.  When we are out of joint with nature or with each other, when we fail to live up to our calling and responsibilities to serve God and one another, when we fail to live justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God, then nature responds as a world out of joint, as a creation out of sync with its creatures. 

Scientifically, we might speak in terms of every action having an equal and opposite reaction.  Scripture addresses us more poetically - as in Jeremiah 4:23-26 where the undoing of the creation of Genesis 1 and beyond is chilling:

            I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;

                        and to the heavens, and they had no light.

            I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,

                        and all the hills moved to and fro.

            I looked, and lo, there was no human at all,

                        and all the birds of the air had fled.

            I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,

                        and all its cities were laid in ruins

                        before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

I feel, somehow, that in the 21st century we have come once again to understand the truth that stands behind this poetic diatribe, this Jeremiad of Jeremiah.  Is the very creation acting as witness through the climate crisis we are facing?